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Drones and the future

I have a nasty suspicion: Automated and possibly armed Drones will be a fact of life at some point in the future. We see the rise of 3D printers, capable software and chips, cheap hardware, cameras… We already see a wide spread of drone types in the hands of enthusiasts and military personnel alike, and the technology to build these things isn’t rocket science but rather getting easier to grasp every day.

On top of this, thanks to globalism, things that were once „far away“ might now hit much closer to home — either because the people living „over there“ come to us, or because people that live next to us more or less suddenly decide to have more in common with those „over there“ than with their next‐door neighbour. (and that doesn’t even have to happen due to religious extremism. Think Eastern Standard Tribe.)

Daniel Suarez painted the already frightening picture in Kill Decision. But while his book posits that it’ll be governments and their military who’ll make use of it most, I am way more frightened by the idea that every splinter extremist group can get their hands on this. We’re really not too far away from Rule 34.

So this is my fear: We won’t be able to prevent drones to exist. These drones will potentially be in the hands of all those people we’d rather not have to have drones. Maybe we should arm ourselves too? Or build drone-resistant communities?